Dynamical Supersymmetry Breaking

TL;DR

This review analyzes dynamical SUSY breaking (DSB) in ${\cal N}=1$ theories, highlighting how non-perturbative dynamics can generate SUSY-breaking vacua while UV theories remain supersymmetric. It combines indirect criteria (Witten index, global symmetries, gaugino condensation) with direct infrared analyses of both calculable weakly-coupled models and strongly-coupled confinements, including dualities that recast difficult dynamics into tractable regimes. The work documents a broad landscape of DSB mechanisms, emphasizes exceptions to conventional criteria, and catalogs representative models (e.g., O'Raifeartaigh-type, 3-2, 4-1, ISS/ITIY) and their low-energy descriptions, spectra, and symmetry breaking patterns. It also discusses model-building tools (discarded-generator constructions and anomalous U(1) frameworks) and notes the ongoing challenge of an organizing principle for DSB, with implications for mediating SUSY breaking to the Standard Model. Overall, the paper advances the theoretical toolkit for identifying and analyzing DSB vacua and informs phenomenological approaches to SUSY breaking and its mediation.

Abstract

Supersymmetry is one of the most plausible and theoretically motivated frameworks for extending the Standard Model. However, any supersymmetry in Nature must be a broken symmetry. Dynamical supersymmetry breaking (DSB) is an attractive idea for incorporating supersymmetry into a successful description of Nature. The study of DSB has recently enjoyed dramatic progress, fueled by advances in our understanding of the dynamics of supersymmetric field theories. These advances have allowed for direct analysis of DSB in strongly coupled theories, and for the discovery of new DSB theories, some of which contradict early criteria for DSB. We review these criteria, emphasizing recently discovered exceptions. We also describe, through many examples, various techniques for directly establishing DSB by studying the infrared theory, including both older techniques in regions of weak coupling, and new techniques in regions of strong coupling. Finally, we present a list of representative DSB models, their main properties, and the relations between them.